Update: On Saturday, April 19, the Golden Bears
rugby team defeated the UC Santa Barbara Gauchos by a score
of 67-29, then proceeded Sunday to
leave Navy high and dry, winning
53-13.
Now, Cal moves on to the National Championships at Stanford. On May 3, they
will play Air Force and in a second match, Harvard will play Army.
On May 4,
the two winners play for the national
championship.

BERKELEY - Late Thursday afternoon,
as the sun set over lush green Witter Field, the California
Golden Bears varsity rugby team was passing and scrummaging
against its toughest competition.

That's right - the
players were practicing against themselves.

Cal has had few rivals on the rugby field for years. The Bears
have won a record-setting 19 of 23 national championships since
the National Collegiate Rugby Tournament began in 1980, including
emerging from the scrum as national champs for the last 12
years in a row.

MacDonald, a senior, balances his
American Studies major not only with playing "prop" for
Cal, but also for the USA rugby team.

Over the past 40 years, no college team in any sport has
been more dominant. Currently, the Bears are tied with the
Arkansas men's indoor track
team
for
a record 12 consecutive national titles, superior
even to the run amassed by North Carolina's women's soccer
team with its 16 titles, nine of them in a row.

Cal has recorded only one loss this season, 30-17, against the University of British Columbia. The Bears came back in the subsequent away portion of this "home-and-away" series to beat the Thunderbirds 26-12, retaining the "World" cup title by a slim one point. (The series was initiated in the 1930s by Vancouver's 'World' newspaper.)

Even Goliath gets nervous

But the 9,670-pound Goliath that is the Cal rugby team won't be playing at
full strength at this weekend's USA Rugby Sweet 16 Tournament, the qualifying
battle for the "Final Four" National Collegiate Championships. Four of Cal's
15 starters have definitely been sidelined by injuries, as have seven reservists.
That could make for a close match against UC Santa Barbara Saturday at 1 p.m. "Santa
Barbara beat CalPoly, and we know CalPoly to be a very good side," says UC
Berkeley senior Mike MacDonald, the Bears' "loosehead prop" and currently its
only team member on the USA national team, the Eagles.

'I don't think it's good if you go in too relaxed - you can feed off that
nervous energy, plus you're aware of more things ... You're
concentrating on what exactly you have to do every time, every play.'

-Mike MacDonald

While Cal takes on Santa Barbara, Texas A&M will play the U.S. Naval Academy
rugby team at 11 a.m. Saturday, April 19, on Witter Field. "We don't know too
much about Texas A&M, but if they're here, they're likely to be very good," says
MacDonald. "Navy is always good, because they're an armed forces school and
the dedication those guys give to anything they do is extraordinary. We always
expect a tough match from the armed forces schools." The winners play each
other Sunday at 1 p.m., and the victor will go on to the national championships
May 3 and May 4 at Stanford University.

You would think that, injured starters aside, the Bears' impressive record
would take the edge off pregame jitters. MacDonald, however, says he and other
others still get nervous before all big games. "I don't think it's good if
you go in too relaxed - you can feed off that nervous energy, plus you're aware
of more things," he explains. "You're concentrating on what exactly you have
to do every time, every play."

Not a "drinking team with a rugby problem"

Thanks to longtime coach Jack Clark's influence - and the team's stellar performance since it began at Cal in 1877 - the Bears are known as the most "professional" of the rugby teams that compete in the Collegiate Championships. Many of their opponents are on club teams, not varsity ones, and don't train year-round like the Bears do.

Coach Jack Clark played both rugby and football
for Cal as a student.

"Rugby has a bad persona about it, where rugby players are looked at as
drinkers first, then athletes," says MacDonald. "The common perception of rugby
is that 'it's a drinking team with a rugby problem.'"

Although MacDonald admits that some partying does go on - he's in a fraternity, after all, as are many of the players - the Cal Bears are definitely athletes first. During non-game weeks like next week, Coach Clark has the team practicing twice a day three times a week, with the first practice starting at a hangover-crushing 6 a.m. In addition, they're expected to run for about an hour in the mornings and lift weights twice a week for a solid hour. So while the 47 players may weigh an average of 205 pounds, making them among the biggest teams around, that weight is not coming from beer guts.

MacDonald, for example, has lost 45 pounds since his freshman year, back when he was also playing football, and has shed 20 just since last year. He's down to a solid 260 pounds of muscle, most of which seems to be packed onto his thighs, which are the size of a small horse's. As one of the team's props - one of the guys who link arms and attempt to push the other team back during a "scrum," as well as lift his own teammates up to catch the ball in a lineout - he needs to be strong and bulky.

Players practice hoisting one another up to catch
the ball after a lineout throw.

"Size is an advantage, but I can definitely afford to sacrifice those 20 pounds
if I can move quicker," he says, adding that he's just as strong as he was
before. MacDonald can still squat-press a frightening 450 pounds, more than
any other teammate.

Patriotic scrum beats

And if MacDonald is any example, these rugby players are also not the ignorant
louts that many people associate with the sport. After all, the idea goes,
who else would be willing to bash heads, shoulders, and everything else wearing
only minimal padding? MacDonald may sport several small scars on his
forehead and close-cropped scalp, but he is successfully juggling his major
in American Studies with playing for both the Bears and the USA national rugby
team - maintaining
a B average, in fact.

It can be a challenge. The youngest member of the USA Eagles, for whom he
has been playing for three years (two as a starter), MacDonald has to travel
a lot internationally. He just returned Sunday from Madrid, where the Eagles
beat
Spain 62-13, and will get back on a plane next weekend to play Spain again,
determining who will go into rugby's World's Cup. If USA wins, it will automatically
be entered, but if Spain prevails, the point differential will determine who
goes.

MacDonald's UC Berkeley professors are pretty understanding of his extracurricular commitments. "One of my teachers let me e-mail a paper in, which was nice of her, and another allowed me to make up a midterm today," he says. "I try to be as accommodating to them as they are to me. So far it's worked out wonderfully."

The USA team's World Cup record is nowhere near as impressive as the Golden
Bears - in all of their Cup appearances the Eagles have won only one game - but
MacDonald says he likes the glory of playing for his country. In fact, that's
mostly why he abandoned his nascent career in football: "I ended up making
the national rugby team after my freshman year, and rugby just had a lot more
opportunities to offer me."

One of those opportunities, of course, was the chance to extend one of college
sports' longest winning streaks into a record. And if all goes well this weekend,
the Bears rugby team will be well on its way into history.